


At the Mercy of Time Itself

by andiheardthemplaying



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, K-pop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 08:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3603687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andiheardthemplaying/pseuds/andiheardthemplaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is the only thing in the world that both stays and goes simultaneously. It moves and changes with time, yet it always remains constant and consistent, never ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Mercy of Time Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Written by that same friend of mine (she should probably just make an account...)

He drifted in and out of consciousness, between his streetlight illuminated bedroom and the expansive wooded dreamscape he slipped away to each night. He could hear sirens raking the city through his open window but the sun kissed trees and sparkling streams in his head were far more enticing. He sighed and rolled over, succumbing to the breezy whisper he had spent one night a year for his entire life listening to groggily. 

 

His voice was soft. Melodic. Calming. The voice of the man who he had met so many years ago and yet had never truly seen. The voice of a lonely loon in the distance on a lake, the voice of a mother talking to her unborn child. He smiled against his pillow as he felt feathers trace across his cheek. He was never sure whether it was a dream or not. Whether each year on his birthday his mind just so happened to relapse into a hazed state of pleasure and imagine the voice of his dreams. 

 

He was never afraid, even when he thought he felt the warm touch of lips behind his ear or heard the soft rhythmic ticking that reminded him so much of his father’s wristwatch from when he was a child. 

 

Now at twenty five years old he was living on his own and had never told anyone of the reoccurring voices he welcomed into his heart each year. 

 

The whispers had been coming for as long as he could remember but he had always kept them to himself,wether it was out of selfishness or fear that he would be called crazy he wasn’t sure. He knew he wasn’t crazy and that was all that mattered. The whispers were all that mattered. 

 

The man had told him many things. He had spun golden stories of empires gone by and kingdoms of the future. He had reminded him of his most precious childhood memories and painted wonderful landscapes of fairytale lands behind his eyelids. He had told him his name was Jaejoong and that he was the keeper of time itself.

 

He didn’t quite understand at first but each and every year it became more clear as he waited patiently to hear the whisper once more in his ever expanding dreamworld built from the blocks of worlds Jaejoong had told him about. He came to understand that Jaejoong was exactly what he had told him, the keeper of time. It was he who turned the clocks of the world and watched as civilizations grew and crumbled. He who let pass new souls and took them away. 

 

He always came at the same time each year, each birthday,each night. Except he never saw him, only accepted the sweet whispers of universes he might never see and compliments to how handsome he had become. 

 

This time it was different. Jaejoong felt closer to him somehow, as if the feathers that had spent so many years running across his cheek had turned to fingers that were grasping tightly at his ribcage. His lungs tightened and his heart beat quickened. What if this was the last time he would ever hear that deliciously harmonic voice? What if Jaejoong’s nervousness was because he was saying goodbye? He had never considered the terms and conditions before, never imagined there might not be a next time. He had never spoken back to the whispers, he didn’t even know if it was possible and besides Jaejoong already knew everything there was to know about him. 

 

He sucked in a breath as the familiar voice returned quietly. “Yunho” he said, “I’ve missed you.” That was always how he began. “You haven’t changed much in the last year. You’re still as beautiful as ever.” Yunho smiled and shifted slightly, his breath relaxing. “I have so many things I want to share with you.” Jaejoong’s voice grew softer and began to move away from his ear. He panicked. Before he could move a single muscle he felt every nerve in his body go slack as his eyes rolled back into his head and he found himself in the familiar clearing of his mind’s own making. 

 

He shook his head in confusion trying to clear his dream state eyes of the haze that surrounded him. 

 

He was kneeling on the grass, it soaked through his pants into his knees, chilling his legs. He was always wearing the same thing in his dreams, a plain white t-shirt and jeans. He wasn’t sure why it never changed, or why nothing in this dream world never changed for that matter. Maybe it wasn’t his decision. 

 

Tonight the forest looked different. This was often where he came to rest at night, spending his time trailing his fingers through the climbing ivy and leaning against the towering trees but today, he was not alone. 

 

Tonight he felt an all too familiar and yet completely strange presence. He glanced around frantically hoping to catch a sight of the man he had spent twenty five years imagining. 

 

A ghost like silhouette slid gracefully through the fog towards him. He couldn’t quite make out a face yet but he could see a slender frame and dance like movement draw closer. He remained tied to the ground beneath him unsure of what to do or how to even begin the encounter he had spend so long picturing. 

 

The man drew closer revealing piercing golden eyes and dark mahogany colored hair. His shoulders were wide and he wore a loose fitting black knit sweater that hung around them, his collarbone exposed. Yunho swallowed. He was the most intensely gorgeous creature he had ever seen, more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. 

He came to be standing right in front of the kneeling Yunho. The younger glanced upwards at the man and traced his eyes over every curve of his slender legs up to his soft smile and wondering eyes. Eyes that were full of understanding and knowing. Eyes that had seen more than anyone ever could. 

 

He looked down at Yunho intently as his smile grew. “Hello Yunho” he said. He couldn’t believe that he was finally coming face to face with the creature that had been exhaling extravagant dreams through his ear drums ever since he could remember. He shuttered and rose to meet him, realizing he was taller than the other. He glanced down at his knees, wet and sore. He grimaced slightly. Jaejoong chuckled.

 

Yunho breathed. Jaejoong smiled up at him and reached out to touch his cheek, the familiar feeling of feathers mixed with heavy desire for what he wasn’t quite sure enveloped him. “I’ve been waiting forever to touch you.” He spoke quietly, catching his eyes on every curve of Yunho’s face. “I’m breaking the rules here you know.” He chuckled again, it was music to Yunho’s ears. “I’ve been breaking the rules for twenty five years.” Jaejoong retracted his hand, Yunho groaned inwardly at the lack of contact. 

 

“I’m not supposed to bring anyone here, to show anyone my face, it gives them too much power, breaks the illusion.” Jaejoong began to pace circles around Yunho. The younger followed him with his gaze as he turned. “You’re the first Yunho. The first to see me, the first to be allowed access to my garden. Granted, I gave you that the moment you were conceived.” Yunho cocked his head to the side in confusion. This man was so wonderfully fascinating. He felt as if he completely understood everything he was and everything he told him, yet he couldn’t quite come to believe that understanding, to bring it from the tip of his tongue to the forefront of his lips. 

 

“I’m not going to lie to you Yunho.” Jaejoong paused in front of him and locked his gaze to his. His eyes mulled with so many emotions Yunho couldn’t make out one from the other. “I’ve whispered to many” he continued, “told thousands and thousands of stories, but never have I watched, hardly have I returned.” He smiled, “But you were different. The moment your soul was granted access I sensed it. A light. You have a lightness that no one else I have ever encountered has. You have no restraints, no inhibitions, you are truly and fully kind and you will come once in my lifetime Yunho.” He shifted closer to the younger, running his thin fingers down his arm, Yunho shivered. 

 

“Contrary to what it might seem I am only a _keeper_ of time not time itself. I have an expiration date. I could not tell you how far off it may be, it may never come at all. Time is tricky like that, not as linear as everyone thinks, its my job to keep you thinking that way.” He winked and Yunho’s stomach tightened. A jolt of electricity galloped through his veins from his eyes to his toes. 

 

“I’m made of flesh and bone like you.” Yunho listened intently, taking in each silkily smooth word and watching his eyes without fail. “So really I am merely a son of the numbers and letters that run the show.”

 

“I watched when you were born, how happy your parents were, how new and innocent you seemed” Jaejoong’s fingers moved to trail along the small of Yunho’s back. He froze. The time keeper’s eyes smoldered. “But as you grew I saw you had answers to questions most people had not even learned how to ask yet. You have wisdom far beyond your years.” His fingers were now resting on Yunho’s hip, tangling lightly in the hem of his t-shirt. Yunho pushed closer. 

 

“I watched as you went to school, as you made friends, as you learned how to live. I watched how your mother sang to you and how you broke when she could no longer speak.” He paused, voice shaky for the first time since he had begun whispering. “It was times like those when you couldn’t stop the bleeding no matter how hard you tried that I wished I could speak to you again, to see you, to hold you.” Yunho could see sparkling tears in Jaejoong’s eyes as he continued to speak, his gaze fell from his face to his chest, he gripped tighter at his t-shirt. 

 

“When your father followed your mother to the dimensions beyond seconds and minutes I thought I was going to break along with you. But, I couldn’t for if I did the world would have crumbled along with us.” He paused, moving his free hand to place it flat on Yunho’s chest, glancing his flaming eyes back up at him. 

 

“I’ve always been here, watching and listening and loving. Wishing that I wasn’t confined to the small windows when I got to turn forward your hands of time. But you see, it could all change.” His voice was rough now and he pressed closer. “If you wanted it to. If you came with me.” His breath tickled against Yunho’s face, so close he could inhale the decadent scent of hundreds of civilizations and universes. 

 

Jaejoong removed himself suddenly from Yunho and took a couple steps backward, still intent on holding his eyes in a death lock. 

 

“But you must know.” He hesitated, “if you do your clock will crumple. The hands will give way to dust and you'll be stuck with me forever at the mercy of time itself.” He reached out again to intertwine his fingers with Yunho’s. The younger still hadn’t spoken, letting each and every word seep through his electrified pores. 

 

“There is so much I can learn from you Yunho. So much the galaxies can conspire, but it is ultimately up to you. If you decide to stay I will leave you as you are but you will forget me. I will become a distant itching memory you can’t quite piece together and I will never be able to return.” He paused to gauge the look on Yunho’s face but when he found no apprehensions he continued, “If you decide to come with me” he played nervously at the corner of his sweater. Yunho wondered how someone so powerful as he could become so nervous, especially because of him. “If you decide you want to surrender to time, to me, then the world will forget you. It will be as if you never existed, or as if you only existed with me, for all of time.” 

 

He should have been afraid. He should have demanded to be let out of this fantasy and put back to work in the real world. But what was the real world? His reality had always been Jaejoong and the times when he waited for him. The man standing before him was the only person he had left, if he could even call him a person. He was everything Yunho could ever dream of and so much more. As hard as he tried he couldn’t think of a single reason not to go with him. 

 

Yunho stepped forward to close the gap between him and Jaejoong. He reached up to caress the other’s cheek. Jaejoong smiled and wound his arms around Yunho’s waist. The fog around them had burnt away to nothing but sunshine. The ivy Yunho had spent so many nights teasing was twisting and contorting into beautifully blooming lilies. The trees sparkled and the meandering trickle of a nearby stream broke the silence. Jaejoong was right. Yunho had no inhibitions, no ties to the earth. He had always and would always live for Jaejoong. 

 

With a careful brush of fingers and pressure in all the right places Yunho soon found himself engulfing the lips of the man he loved. He tasted sweet and bubbly. It was a feeling that his physical form could not have handled, he was sure of it. The time keeper groaned and ran his hands up Yunho’s back, tangling his fingers in his hair and pulling him closer. 

 

Their tongues found lips and their hands found bare flesh. Time was non-existent to them now. They had everything they could ever want. Yunho pulled back slowly to whisper once before diving back in, “yes” he had said, “I will come with you.” Jaejoong had smiled against his swollen lips and pulled him to the ground. There they devoured each other into infinity. 

 

For a moment the world stood still. Everything was at equilibrium. Jaejoong abandoned his duties to crash into ecstasy with the only man he had ever loved. Although no one on earth would ever know why what felt like seconds to them and eternity to the two lovers was the happiest moment of their lives, they would always be content in the thought that love would always remain, it might move and change with time, yet it was never ending.

 


End file.
